Final Release of AV Linux (6.0) Released!

AV Linux 6.0 is out with Ardour 2,3b5 (with accompanying Win-VST builds) and also the demo version of Mixbus 2.1. Sincere thanks to Paul Davis (and the Ardour development team) and also Ben Loftis and Todd at Harrison Mixbus.

Full story here: http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?topic=2530.0

I sometimes wish one/two eccentric millionaire's will make a big donation to Linux audio.

That would be useful - but I fear they would have to be very eccentric.. :)
In reality I think projects like AVLinux and others don't need people to donate huge sums of money, though I'm sure that would be nice.
They just need the majority of people who use them to give a small amount. $1 per download of AVLinux for example would I'm sure make it very profitable, and that's possibly less than the cost of the blank DVD required to make the install disk.
The reason a project stops development may not be entirely to do with finance - but personally I think if donation funded projects do not get donations then they should cease development because, if the developer / maintainer is saying "if you find this useful please make a donation" and people say how much they like and depend on it but few donations happen, then that unwritten agreement is not being honoured.

recently the developper of Tango Studio, another exellent audio dist, also abandoned the project. It´s been obvious for me for some time that it would be far better for the community if all those exellent brains worked together in something common, so de developpment wouldn´t stop if one of them abandons. Happened before and will happen again. That´s one reason why, with infite sadness, I just bought a mac. Sorry

Thanks for the comments guys. I appreciate the comments about donations but I want to be clear that it was not only a lack of donations that influenced my decision, it was also about being able to balance my other priorities and the workload of AV Linux was leaving too little room for the 'important' things in life.

That said I appreciate the sense of humour in Francois comment, but if I were myself an eccentric millionaire (so far I'm just eccentric) I would still expect people to donate to the project. There is no "community" in one person doing all the work and others simply partaking of it with no return gesture, there is no other earthly paradigm where something as one-sided as open source software development could succeed. How would government social assistance work if no one paid their taxes? What would happen to Ubuntu if Canonical pulled the plug? There are hundreds of other societal examples I could come up with but I assume people get the point. As linuxDSP pointed out so many projects could handily succeed and improve with a one dollar donation from a large user base. I personally donate to about 12 upstream projects from AV Linux not because I'm anything special but because I believe in the law of reciprocity because it works! Of course not everyone can donate and there are a variety of circumstances that people live in and live with, I don't believe that lets the majority of us average Linux-using schmoes with jobs and families off the hook. One dollar for a turnkey Operating System? One dollar for an amazing sequencer like Ardour? There is no rational argument why your average productive working citizen using Linux could not support a handful of projects with a meagre 10-20 bucks a year! Someone please rationalize that for me...seriously when you think about and let it sink in for a moment it is truly ludicrous.

Look at the history of every Linux multimedia distro from DeMudDi and 64Studio up to AV Linux and Tango Studio, CCRMA is an exception as it is wisely a repo instead of a Distro. If people think young guys like falkTX (who is a truly exemplary developer) or Dick MacInnis (also providing an excellent product) will never tire of ceaselessly toiling day and night without becoming disenchanted and burned out, you better think again. Without proper support from users it's not a question of 'if' it's a question of 'when'. Secondly if you think pro audio hardware manufacturers are ever going to look at Linux sideways as a viable market without linuxDSP, Harrison, Renoise, Modartt drawing their gaze away from Windows and OSX think again. It's time for Linux users (including myself) to stop talking about the sugarcandy bullshit world of 'freedom to pay nothing' and start thinking about using our real freedom to invest a nominal amount of money per person into MAKING something actually happen and keeping the good things we have happening.

Congratulations on the release, Glen. And thanks for all the fine work you've done over the years in putting together AVLinux. Your project was a prime inspiration for Dream Studio (Thanks for the mention, BTW). Good luck in your future endeavours!

Thanks very much, and same to you. I've enjoyed your music and heard great things about Dream although I haven't had time in the past to use it personally (yet). I hope to not disappear completely and maybe will finally have time to finish some tracks sitting on a storage drive for 15 years now...

Al the best and encouragement for Dream Studio, I sincerely hope Linux folks will start to value the above and beyond efforts that you and other Linux Audio developers do to help bring our beloved platform to a wider audience!